Eye For Music

I've been neglecting the part of me that best processes, experiences, and understands the world by Writing Things Down, and it does make me wonder -- in fits of an almost obligatory dread -- if that is a bad sign for someone who intends, in varying ways, to make a life of Writing Things Down. But the part of me that doesn't-worry-about-these-things-because-worrying-about-these-things-doesn't-solve-these-things says its piece, and all the other voices in my head nod earnestly (if somewhat eagerly) and move on with their lives, with a silent agreement (less binding than a verbalized one) to devote more time to Writing Things Down. And here I am instead, working my through a small backlog of photos from shows, taken across the past couple months. There is something to be said about justifying procrastination as merely satisfying other areas of interest, and that is that it is an excuse, and a mostly adequate one.

So these photos were all taken with either my phone or an old Sony point and shoot I borrowed from my roommate, excepting for a batch (noted below) that were taken with a Canon PowerShot S95 point and shoot (more on that below).

The Head & The Heart, at Terminal 5 on March 8th. These guys were a lot of fun -- I highly recommend catching one of their live shows if you can.

Whereas The Head & The Heart are a six-piece band that fill up the stage with their harmonies and size (occasionally swollen even more by friends and other musicians invited to join them on stage to jam out on certain songs), The Joy Formidable are made up of only three members, and play pretty much the entire show with just the three of them. And yet the band's energy, embodied so succinctly in lead singer Ritzy Bryan's sass, sneers, and smiles, engulfs the stage and crowd in the same way. They played Terminal 5 on March 28th.

My biggest gripe with most point and shoots is their deficiency in low light settings. Even a band playing at a fairly well-lit venue like Terminal 5 can be washed out in muddy blacks or blurred into oblivion by a maddeningly unadjustable shutter trying to compensate for the light level. On the other hand, you sometimes end up with interesting dazzles of color and light.

I've been hesitant to invest in a decent point and shoot because A) I already cashed in all my chips for my 5D, B) I really only have a need for one to shoot at venues that don't allow me to bring in my 5D, and C) cell phone cameras have been good enough (and continue to get better) to at the very least cast the shadow of redundancy over point and shoots. But I thought I'd do some research, and borrowed a friend's S95 because it's supposed to be a stellar low-light shooter, the only feature I would prize in a point and shoot. And you know what? It did really well. Not well enough to spur me to immediately whip out my wallet, but well enough to keep the door open on a future purchase. In any case, I'd recommend it for those actually in the market for a point and shoot.

The Naked & Famous were back in town, this time headlining at Terminal 5 (as opposed to their opening gig last year) on April 4th, and their show was the beneficiary of the S95's low light capabilities.

Jumping back to camera phone shots, this last batch is from the Memoryhouse show at Public Assembly on April 21st. Public Assembly is one of those smaller Brooklyn venues, and a fitting place to see a dreamy, shoegaze-y act like Memoryhouse in that it allows for an intimacy that otherwise would've been lost in a bigger space. That said, they spend about $35 on their lighting efforts, but even with that handicap I think it's still pretty apparent how much better the S95 is at handling heavy contrast and higher ISOs.

That's probably more than enough blathering on about cameras. How about some music to fill in the quiet until I commit to writing something more meaningful down?

Video Games

What is it about the Lana Del Rey saga? It continues to attract attention, both critical and metacritical, from a perplexingly broad spectrum of pundits -- everyone from indie blogs to tastemaker celebrities to well-regarded network newsmen have weighed in with their opinions. I should preface this by saying that I'm digging all of it -- LDR continues to be an artist whose infinitely constructible and de-constructible narrative I enjoy immensely.

I have no shame in admitting my own affinity for certain slices of pop music. In fact, I may actually be more bashful in admitting my regular listening habits, which usually trend toward the indie scene (whatever that means this week day hour). So it's no surprise, then, that when Lana Del Rey ambushed the music blogs with her two haunting singles and a hypnotic lo-fi video last year, I was hooked. Who was this girl, who made this grandiose-yet-simple, slightly-left-of-conventional pop music with seemingly blase indifference?

Of course, by now, you probably know the story, or at least some version of it. The strength of those first two singles gained her instant adoration on the music blogs. It also landed her a hefty recording deal with a major record label, which promptly stamped her as the next big thing (one of many, sure, but arguably THE next big thing). She quickly earned more and more fans (her December 5th show in New York sold out in minutes. The $15 tickets were subsequently hawked for $100+ on StubHub. I only know this because I tried to get them), even as she settled unsteadily into that odd square of space between the indie scene and pop superstardom. Did she still have indie cred? Did she even still need it? Would she cross over and become the hit maker her record label surely demanded?

Through it all, she maintained that distant, couldn't-give-a-fuck-about-anyone-but-my-fans attitude, but there was something more there that started to intrigue me. While critics busied themselves with ripping her "gangster Nancy Sinatra" persona as an image manufactured by her label, a beguiling subplot began to emerge across the various concert videos and reviews that sprouted on the internet, like wildflowers in a roadside ditch. She could be charming in a way, sure, and she could definitely sing. But what seemed to come across most viscerally was the fact that she was awkward. She wrung her hands between songs. She clearly sought to be great, to be perfect. The indie scene clamors for cool authenticity while the mainstream has an appetite for polish, and yet here it was, so plainly butted up against all of it -- Lana Del Rey wanted this, badly, and was trying really hard not to fuck it up.

Then, of course, SNL happened.

There are performances where you're awed by the talent on display. There are performances where you're discovering something you've never seen or heard before. Then there are ones where it isn't quality or originality that suck you in, but the greater narrative unfolding behind the product. And here is Lana Del Rey's narrative that I've latched on to -- a 25 year old singer whose first go-around amounted to nothing much (the Lizzy Grant album) suddenly finds herself in the wings to the grand stage she's been chasing so long (and here I mean a metaphorical stage, not the one in Studio 8H), and even while the dream begins to crystallize, she realizes how fragilely it's held together. Maybe it's suddenly funny, in that inappropriate, funereal sort of way. Under the heat of a growing number of lights, anxiety starts to boil over. She wonders what to do with her hands and, finding no good solution, lets them wander awkwardly, occasionally in foreign, uncomfortable patterns some label executive, or perhaps her flagging confidence, has convinced her to try. She tries to stay true to some idea of herself that she promised she wouldn't lose, only now she's struggling to remember what that idea was, and what significance it had ever held. She just wants to sing her songs, under her terms, yet why is it suddenly so hard to remember how to do that?

The problem with forming these narratives is that they are inherently speculative, and usually wildly so. But to confirm or deny them would ruin the illusion (you could even argue that much of the criticism against Lana Del Rey has been based on some prefabricated narrative not being met), so they're intentionally woven together from scraps. That my affection for Lana Del Rey is built on a foundation of willful ignorance, then, is something I accept. Why not? We do it for so many other people -- actors, politicians, historical figures -- why not for a singer who makes songs that are catchy as hell? The narrative will likely one day resolve into something resembling the truth, but I'm comfortable with where it stands for now.

And where it stands is that Lana Del Rey is moving forward. After gamely taking on, and soundly winning over, David Letterman, she sits through a meandering, depthless profile for the Times. She does nothing to clearly prove, one way or the other, what her story is, and so the narrative -- my narrative for her -- continues. She heads to LA and stops by Amoeba, where perhaps one of her most illuminating performances is given.

She looks comfortable. Casual, even. The dream remains unachieved; the challenge remains unmet. But she's come through something, and found herself still standing. Her fans couldn't love her more for it. You can see the emotion bubble over for a second, before a hand is placed over her lips, bottling it in. You can't see what she's thinking, but you can speculate. You can continue to build the narrative (and even begin to wonder if maybe that's the point of Lana Del Rey's cordial detachment). Behind the artifice and the hype and the criticisms and even the speculation, Lana Del Rey is still trying like hell not to fuck it up. But she's also learned that it isn't necessarily the end of the world if you do. And if you look closely, you can see her start to believe that maybe she can pull it all off.

At least that's what I believe. And sometimes, the most compelling stories are the ones we can attach our own to.

May Daze

It seems like I blinked and half of May is already gone. The city's been surprisingly gracious lately (considering the long winter we had), offering sunny days that skew more mild than thick and soupy, and I likes my weather mild. The thunderstorms that have been lurking behind the curtains of clouds the past couple of days suggest that the three (two and a half? Screw it, I'm rounding up) weeks of Spring we got this year are coming to an end, but even the imminent threat of rain showers and rumbling skies aren't enough to dampen the city's, or my own, spirits.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, work-wise, but I somehow managed to squeeze in some extra-curriculars.

When word broke late at night on May 1st that Osama bin Laden had been killed and a crowd started to gather at Ground Zero, I had to head down and see what that scene was like. People celebrate for their own reasons that may or may not be in line with your beliefs, but politics aside, that kind of jubilant unity is something I can wholeheartedly appreciate.

Freedom Tower steadily building up in the back. On a side note, you can see me seeing this here.

Moving on to other things, The Naked and Famous played Terminal 5 a couple weeks back.

They pummeled the crowd with a barrage of 5 of their most popular songs. It was a short but exuberant set, as they were opening for these guys:

Freelance Whales

Foals

(On a side note, all my Terminal 5 pictures start to look the same after a while...) All good bands, but I had gone that night to see The Naked and Famous, so when it turned out that they had added a last minute show that same night at Piano's, a local bar in the Lower East Side, there pretty much was no way I was going to miss it. We had to cut out of Foals early to make it down there, but it was worth it.

Much better seats.

Blinding

I meant to post these earlier, but haven't gotten around to it until now.

Florence + the Machine at Terminal 5. This woman is fantastic live (and through a set of speakers or headphones, for that matter).

(One of these days, I'll get around to bringing a DSLR around again so I can stop posting grainy phone pictures.)

Harp!

All The Winds At Your Eyes

Stars at Terminal 5 (with Wild Nothing opening).

Taking the Stage

Late last month, Possible Productions had the opportunity to work on some of the video content for Jay-Z's set during his landmark "Home & Home" four-show tour with Eminem. They played two dates in Detroit's Comerica Park and two dates in New York's Yankee Stadium. Figge and Alex, after working their asses off in New York and Detroit, sat out the Yankee Stadium leg of the tour to go back home to L.A. so they could focus on the video content for Deadmau5's VMA set (which looked fucking fantastic. See some of it here). Possible Production's two All-Access passes thus transferred to me and Roy, so on Monday and Tuesday, it was off to the Bronx with us.

The show, to put it mildly, was amazing. Much of my love for hip-hop has waned in recent years, but Em and Jay are two of the biggest reasons I fell in love with rap in the first place. They also happen to be two of the biggest (with Jay being arguably the biggest ever, no?) hip-hop icons working today. I was excited, but 2002 me would've lost his freaking mind over going to a show like this. 2010 me played it much cooler. Either that or I'm just a lot more jaded now. Probably the latter.

My concert-going phase, which only bloomed in the last few years, never really overlapped with my hip-hop phase, so this is one of the first hip-hop concerts I've attended. I'm familiar with the kind of energy rock shows and music festivals can generate, but I was curious to see if rappers could create that same kind of buzz without the help of soaring melodies or epic solos. Eminem's relentless vitriol, occasional goofiness, and overall sincerity (not to mention a catalogue of hits) helped him command the stage. He put on a good show. But you haven't seen stage presence until you've seen Jay-Z live. That man commands 40,000 strong on swagger alone. Throw that in with his increased touring activity over the last few years, and you have somebody who has mastered how to put on a good show. He knows exactly what his strengths are and when to hit the crowd with something to really stir them up. And nobody in this business seems to have friends like Jay has friends. A slew of guest appearances ensured the night stayed interesting as the concert ran past midnight into hour four.

Awesome show aside, what really put the night over the top for me was just seeing our company's work up on the screen. There were definitely several moments when I found myself looking around the stands of Yankee stadium, packed to the seam with screaming fans, then looked to the stage only to see something I helped make, right there on the screen (though most of the credit goes to Figge and Casey McClain, an animator we hired for the gig), and wondered "How the hell did I get here?" Anyway, making some money and getting the company's name out there on cool shit like this is definitely an unbelievable experience, but here's to hoping it's just the first step towards a future of doing our own projects, our own way. On to the next one!

Now for some pictures (taken on my phone, so forgive the general crappiness):

The view from left field.

Look! Team USA in the crowd! Handy-dandily labeled for easy recognition!

Em and 50.

Oh yeah. He brought out the fucking Doctor. That's him on the bottom left.

Hova!

You knew he had to do a Biggie tribute. That's Possible Productions' work, by the way.

Chris Martin on the left, Jay with the hands up.

 On day two, instead of Chris, he brought out the queen Mary J. Blige!

She ripped a quick solo set.

Blurry picture of Jay and the boy Drake.

And then he brought out Beyonce!

Not the best picture of her, but the clearest one I have.

More Possible Productions on the screen! This one Roy and I actually shot.

Same with this one. Marcy!

Aaaand even more Possible.

I grabbed some video of various songs throughout the concert, but I don't have a way to process the footage right now. Assuming I don't succumb to general laziness, I'll post those later.